Page 41 of Manacled Hearts

She motherfucking laughs!

And it sounds ridiculously good. Dangerously so.

Brown sugar and ginger intensifies through my senses, contributing to the haze that already took over my brain. Only, now I’m drunk on her.

I’m sick… so goddamn sick.

“I was dancing. You interrupted me,” she complains, yet her eyes spell mischief in multiple languages.

I was expecting more protest, fighting back, but it’s clear as day—she really is drunk. How did they serve her here? The legal age is eighteen.

“Who are you here with? Katya? Morrigan?” I ask.

She shakes her head slowly and smiles. “I am all on my own. Can you believe it? On my own.” She’s giddy as she says those words, oddly proud too.

There aren’t enough curses and swear words in the English language for me to express how I feel about this piece of information.

“What the hell were you thinking?” I swipe a hand over my face at the stupidity of what she’s done. After all that happened to her, being alone is the last thing she should do.

She shrugs and starts looking around, seemingly uninterested in the direction of this conversation.

“I was thinking that I deserve this… especially today.”

“You need to go home, where you are safe, and sleep it off,” I tell her, my tone grave.

She laughs again and moves along to the music. To my dismay, a slow, R&B tune fills the barroom, and her hips sway torturously from side to side. We’re lost in the crowd as more people join on the dance floor, and in a strange paradox, it’s turning more intimate. Like we’re alone.

“You, mister, need to go back to your girlfriend,” she says.

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

She purses her lips, but then shrugs and straightens.

“Home. Now!” I insist.

“You don’t get to tell me what to do, Finnigan Hennessey. Remember?” She pokes me in the middle of the chest as her steps falter, and I quickly grab her bicep to steady her.

She takes it as a cue and wraps her hand around my nape, gripping my side with the other, so warm on my ribs. She starts moving against me without warning, swaying her whole body as she pulls me to follow her rhythm.

All night I felt wrong with Clara around me. But now, with Evelyn’s body lined against mine, her scent wrapped around every inch of me, her incredible eyes holding mine in their invisible tether, it feels disturbingly right.

I can’t tell if it’s the alcohol guiding my feet or my will, but they move with her. As if hypnotized, they follow her flow, our eyes locked onto each other as we lose ourselves in a world that’s only ours. It feels both right and wrong. It’s perfect and forbidden. It’s meant to be and doomed to fail.

This makes no sense.

She makes no sense.

But us… we make all the sense in the world.

It’s been too many years, and not one woman has managed to stick to me. But Evelyn has crawled right under my skin, and she’s slowly bleeding her soul into my veins. My muscles tense when her warm touch leaves slithering electric current in its wake as she draws down to my clenched fist. I didn’t register the ache from the strain until she guided me to relax my hand, then pulled it to her waist.

My touch meets bare skin, the softness so electrifying that it seems as if she’s the one caressing me. I can’t help but squeeze her delicate flesh. Just once. That’s all I allow myself.

But the minx pulls herself closer, pressing against me and making me far too aware of the hard on that I’m failing to control. She’s not acknowledging it, and I’m not sure if I’m relieved or slightly disappointed. Before I can think better of it, I reach up and brush the back of my fingers against her cheek, down the soft line of her jaw, and under her delicate chin, guiding it up. Liquid gold sparkles where it meets the gray in her mesmerizing irises, and I don’t know if it’s her gaze or the touch, but whatever it is ignites a heat that floods my chest like it’s seeping out of my very soul. And there’s nothing foreign about it. It’s a slotted piece of a puzzle I decided long ago I will not try to solve. It’s been begging to be let out, to slot into place in the fabric of my being and wrap around the one thing inside my chest I have to protect.

Keeping it at bay has been easy. Until now. After all these years, all it took was one look at her.

My fingers trace her bare flesh mindlessly and my feet are still guided by her. I should stop this. It’s not right, none of this is right. This must be a sickness.

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